The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to set up a panel of experts to block virtual dare games like Blue Whale Challenge, which has allegedly led to several suicides.
The court also sought the government’s response on a plea seeking to firewall such life threatening/violent games existing in the cyber world like ‘Choking game’, ‘Salt and Ice Challenge’, ‘Fire Challenge’, ‘Cutting challenge’, ‘Eyeball challenge’ and ‘Human Embroidery game.’ A firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorised access to or from a private network by controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic.
Reply by October 27
A Bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, asked the government to constitute an expert committee to create such firewalls and file its reply on October 27.
The Bench, comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, also restrained all High Courts from entertaining and proceeding further in similar pleas.
The plea was filed by activist and advocate Sneha Kalita, who sought directions to intermediaries, particularly network service providers, internet service providers, web hosting service providers and cyber cafes to observe due diligence and take steps to inform all users of computer resources “not to host, display, upload and share any virtual digital game, which is grossly harmful and life threatening and morally degrading.”
“Issue directions to the respondents No 1 (Centre) to take immediate measures to ban/block the sites linked with the dangerous Blue Whale online game or any other forms of violence and immoral game similar in nature,” the plea said.
Better filtering
Ms. Kalita sought a direction to the government to improve “the filtering services at Indian shores like having firewalls in each cable landing station or having DNS blocking wall with brain scanner (at underground submarine optical fibre cable connecting the operators abroad) to be installed at Indian shores to prevent and filter the virtual online games which are harmful and life-threatening and morally degrading.”
The petition also sought a direction to the Ministry of Woman and Child Development to take precautions to prevent youngsters from falling into the trap of such games. The Supreme Court is already hearing a petition filed by a 73-year-old man from Tamil Nadu seeking a ban on Blue Whale Challenge allegedly linked to the death of several children worldwide.
